It’s just the potion, he told himself. Flying is too much for the senses, especially after you lose a little blood. But his arm ached and burned with a strange cold sensation that he didn’t like at all.
“Fight it off a little longer,” he snarled at himself. “A little longer.”
The towers of the Sharburg loomed before him, and he saw the high windows of the banquet hall where Selkirk had received them before. He angled down and swooped in at the castle, flashing across the battlements so swiftly that the sentries walking there could only stare dumbfounded. Then he threw his arms up over his face and barreled through the nearest of the windows in a shower of breaking glass. He glimpsed dozens of Sembians, Ilsevele and her guards, even a quartet of musicians, all frozen in amazement. Then he overshot them all and slammed into a vintner’s table, sending bottles and fine glass flying everywhere.
“What in the world-?” Miklos Selkirk snarled. He surged to his feet, his hand leaping for his sword hilt.
“Starbrow!” cried Ilsevele. She stood too, and started toward him.
Fflar’s vision reeled from side to side, and he hurt all over. But somehow he found his way to his feet. “Ilsevele,” he groaned. “It’s a trap! A trap!”
Ilsevele whirled around, seeking a threat. Around her, Sembians and elves scrambled to their feet, all looking wildly from side to side. She turned to Selkirk to demand an explanation-and behind her, the quartet of musicians calmly set down their lutes and bitterns, and raised deadly wands instead.
Fflar threw himself into motion, racing crookedly across the floor. The musicians were simply too far, but he launched himself headlong toward Ilsevele just as the assassins barked their commands and unleashed a storm of fire and lightning in the crowded hall. He managed to fling her to the floor as a brilliant blue-white bolt burned through the air where she had been standing, charring his back instead. Hot white agony seemed to pick him up and throw him down again, leaving him contorted on the hard stone floor. Screams of panic and mortal agony filled the air, amid the angry roar of searing magical flame and the deafening crack! of lightning bolts exploding in the elegant hall.
Ilsevele picked herself up and drew a wand of her own from the sleeve of her beautiful gown, now torn and blackened. She aimed it at the nearest of the assassins and cried out, “Elladyr! ”
A coruscating bolt of white energy shot out and caught the fellow in the center of his chest, flinging him head over heels through the smoking wreckage of the bandstand. The others responded with another barrage of spells that wreaked even more carnage in the hall. “Defend Lady Miritar!” Fflar croaked. He rolled to all fours and shook his head to clear it of the ringing and the dizziness. It didn’t work, but he planted one foot on the ground and levered himself upright, drawing Keryvian. The banquet hall was nothing less than screaming, smoke-wreathed pandemonium, the equal of any battlefield he had ever set foot on. Several of the Sembian lords, led by Selkirk himself, rushed the bandstand and struck up a furious melee with the surviving assassins.
Ilsevele whirled and fired her wand again, this time at a crossbow-wielding sniper who appeared on one of the upper balconies overlooking the hall. The thundering lance of white energy smashed the balcony to pieces, dropping the fellow to the floor below in a cascade of rubble.
Fflar turned, looking for any other threat, just in time to see an assassin dressed in the livery of a wine steward stealing up behind Ilsevele, a wavy-bladed dagger in his hand. But the young captain Seirye, so badly burned and charred that he couldn’t even hold a blade in his gnarled hands, simply lurched into the knife wielder and held him up for a crucial moment. The blade flashed once, then twice, and Seirye sank to the floor, still clawing at the killer’s tunic. But the young elf’s valor was not in vain. Before the knifeman could pull himself free, Fflar staggered over and took his arm off at the shoulder with one wild, off-balance swing.
“Drow! They’re drow!” cried one of the Sembians.
Fflar glanced down at the man he’d just downed, and saw the magical guise slip away with the assassin’s death. In place of a round-faced, unremarkable human, an ebon-skinned drow with red eyes lay staring sightlessly up at him.
“I could have told you that,” he muttered to no one in particular.
Keryvian rang shrilly on the stone floor. He looked down, surprised that he had dropped the blade. He leaned over to pick up the sword, but lost his balance entirely and crumpled to the ground beside his blade. Fight it! Fight it! he raged, trying to find the strength to push himself upright again. But all he managed to do was roll weakly onto his back. He found himself looking up at the proud banners that hung in the upper part of the hall, now burning merrily from the fireballs and lightning bolts that had been loosed in the attack.
The hall seemed to fall silent. The ringing of steel on steel faded, and no more thunderbolts or roaring blasts of flame split the smoke-filled hall. The battle was over, and a dozen drow warriors lay scattered here and there on the floor, still dressed in the tatters of their disguises.
“Starbrow! Starbrow!” Ilsevele rushed up to him and fell to her knees at his side, grasping his hand in hers. Tears streaked her face. “What happened? Are you hurt? What’s wrong?”
“Arrow in the arm,” he managed. “I think… I’ve been poisoned.”
“You saved me,” she murmured. “Just like the time you faced the ghost in the vault. You saved me again, Starbrow.”
“I couldn’t let you get hurt, Ilsevele,” he said. He was so tired
… all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep. “I couldn’t bear it.”
“I know.” Ilsevele smiled through her tears, and she leaned over him, her hair of fiery red cowling her face and his, and kissed him deeply, passionately, her hands cupping his face and lifting him up to her. “Stay with me, Starbrow,” she whispered between her kisses. “Don’t die, not now! Stay with me.”
Somehow he found the strength to reach one hand up to her face, to caress her perfect face and brush away her tears. Then he laced his fingers in her hair and gently pulled her down to kiss her again, to feel her breath mingling with his, her lips warm and soft.
“I won’t die,” he whispered to her. “I’ve found what I came back for.”
Then he fell away into darkness, still lost in her emerald eyes.
Araevin and his companions passed the night, such as it was, in a princely suite. Ornate lanterns of gold ringed the room, but the dim lanterns did little to push back the encroaching darkness outside, and nothing at all to alleviate the bitter cold. They eventually had to make use of the sleeping-furs waiting atop the great round beds, even though Araevin’s skin crawled at the dusty age of the covers. He couldn’t avoid the impression that he was wrapping himself in the cerements of the grave.
After what seemed like an age in the dimly lit apartments, two of Selydra’s pallid warriors came for them. Araevin and his friends followed the Lorosfyrans through the long, echoing corridors of the palace for quite a distance. Shadows gathered in each doorway they passed, fleeing their light slowly and reluctantly. They came to a winding staircase and climbed up a floor, and their grim guides led them out into a courtyard of sorts. A tall white tree grew in a knurled knot of clawlike branches and leaping roots. Not a single leaf graced its sharp branches, but here and there dark red fruit like drops of blood gleamed in the darkness.